Feeding upright chunks of wood into a chippper. good or bad???

[Ax-Man]

I have wondered about this for a long time weather it is good or bad to feed short chunks of wood upright instead of horizontal the way you feed limbs into a chipper.

Every once in awhile we have to do this so we don't have to make a trip back for waste wood. 12 inch dia. wood is about the max I feel comfortable feeding our chipper if it is long enough. My chipper is rated for bigger material but it does like it unless it is real softwood. We can get by if need be cutting larger material into short rounds and feed them in upright or rip short logs and then feed them in. Either way I don't care for this as the sound of chipping is different and the chips are much bigger.

I guess my real question is this hard on the bearings and clutch ??? That is my main concern. To me a chipper is designed to chip limbs and wood with the rotation of the drum and knives to go with the grain fo the wood, not against it .

Just looking to see what thoughts some of you guys would have on this subject.

 

[Thor's Hammer]

It's just wood. It won't do any harm whatsoever.

 

[Tucker943]

The harder the load, the greater the wear and tear. My philosophy on chipping big wood, which is relative to the chippers size, is that I keep it to a minimum. Im conservative about that stuff though. In my experience, its harder on clutches, drive belts, knives, the engine, etc. If I only have a few marginal pieces and am trying to roll off the job with nothing but clean chips, I chip the big stuff. But if I have a fair amount of bigger stuff, they get handled by other means. But, I'm a nervous nelly about my equipment and try to treat it gingerly, for the most part. Sometimes I'm brutal if the situation requires it. On crave removals though, if it fits in the chipper, its going in. Period.

 

[Tucker943]

Looking back, my answer was not relevant to your question. Sorry about that.

 

[stig]

Don't you have electronic RPM control on your chipper, so it'll slow down the feed rate when the RPMs of the disc slows down?

 

[pete mctree]

I can't see any issues. Chipping is not dependent on direction of grain as it is seldom uniform - think of unions or bends in normal branches & how they are presented to the blades

 

[Tucker943]

Don't you have electronic RPM control on your chipper, so it'll slow down the feed rate when the RPMs of the disc slows down?

No, don't have that feature on my chipper. I have a control beside the infeed to slow or speed the feed rate at my choosing.

 

[Al Smith]

Unless I'm mistaken the feed speed on Toms' Morebark comes out of the oil pump prior to the pressure relief .As the engine speed bogs down it slows or stops the feed rate .

It was either that or the voltage sensed prior to the voltage regulator on the alternator was used as a reference .We set it up with the book but I honestly can't remember exactly how it went other than it works pretty good .

That thing will chew up whatever you stick in it but it does make a hell of a racket chewing up 10" logs .16" capacity I think ???

 

[squisher]

Most chips nowadays have an electronic 'auto-feed'. If my chipper bogs a little controller automatically stops and slightly reverse the feed rollers until it powers back up to where it's supposed to be. Fully adjustable for rpms it kicks in at and amount of reversing and at what rpm it starts feeding again.

 

[Al Smith]

I'm going to see the ole boy in the morning .I can't remember if it reversed or not .

The price of scrap is up so he's going to retrieve a couple tons of iron left over from his junk he left at my shop .I wouldn't doubt between my shop and his junk in the back of his garage he a thousand bucks worth .

 

[thattreeguy]

i'll bite...
.when i worked at great scott, i learned from the mechanics that the shafts of the 1800 vermeers would break,
because of the amount of logs we chipped and random chunks of wood that went thru those machines...seen about a half dozen of them go, boy they beat the hell out of them machines

i preffer a disc to a drum on the big wood myself...my .02

 

[Al Smith]

Say I did talk to Tom regarding his Morebark chipper .I was mistaken as the model he has is not equipted with auto feed .Just a " Johnson bar " thing that stops or reverses the feed .

Now he nearly bought a diesel version that did have self governed feeder .The way it worked was a prox switch in conjuction with an electronic unit that detected an RPM drop by counting the teeth on the flywheel ring gear .More or less the same way a cruise control works or in effect for those familiar with the term a "hall effect " sensor .

Same deal is used on modern auto engines for the "PIP" signal /piston in position .

 

[Ax-Man]

I don't have any kind of RPM sensor on my chipper. If I do it isn't working or never has worked since I got it. I can control the feed rate with the reversing bar which makes it nice on those big long limbs or those long pieces of wood that 12 to 14 inch dia. I can slow down the feed rate to make the finest prettiest little chips that are almost like sawdust. If I could produce a truckload of that stuf it would be valuable for mulch or animal bedding.

Pete said it best, my concern is these short, odd, kind of big pieces of wood going into the chipper and the way they are presented to the knives for chipping. It just doesn't seem like the "right" thing to do. I dunno maybe I am just being a worry wart over nothing because like Thor said it is just wood and the machine can handle it even though is sounds worse than it really is and those chips just look ugly when they get spit out the chute.

 

[thattreeguy]

youre worrying too much, small random chunks come out in bigger pieces cause they shatter when hit by the knife, just keep a long branch to run thru as a chaser, in case a small piece wants to hang up........

 

[SydTreeguy]

If I'm understanding the OP correctly, you're saying you want to feed in wood standing in a vertical direction? Like, say, a piece of trunk standing upright? If so, it isn't the best idea. Wood ought to be presented to the chipper (disk or drum) with the grain end on, so the chipper can actually chip it. If you are presenting it side on, like rolling a round in sideways, then the wood will splinter into long shards. If you present it upright, I imagine it would splinter then be crushed or explode, maybe getting jammed between the knives and the anvil. The knives are constantly slamming down on the work, if it is presented upright then the knife will split it in the fashion of an axe, regardless of disk or drum but slightly worse in the case of a disk because it doesnt have the curve of the drum so it is driving vertically. What happens to the split upright? It cant fit between the knife and anvil so it will bend and snap, or with a drum which often has a large rebate behind the knife it will bend and jam up the works.

If you are selling your chip or giving it to customers for free then you will have a harder time getting rid of chip with lots of shards in it. Its getting harder for me to get rid of chip thesedays, even for free. Customers want good consistent chip and the only way to get it is with end grain feed, sharp knives and a well adjusted anvil gap. I'm chipping with an 18" bandit drum and we are careful about how we cut our wood. Logs are cut long, and ripped to width. Short sections are harder and more dangerous to feed. On trees over about 4' diameter I try to get rid of the largest parts of the barrel as free firewood. It saves a lot of ripping and chipping.

Shaun

 

[top_notch]

We cut a lot of big cottonwoods here in Steamboat. Our Vermeer 1800 eats vertical logs all day. So far no problems, hopefully the axle won't break. The cottonwood is not good for fire wood and we usually don't have a machine on jobs to get rid of the big wood so we either rip logs down the center or send them through vertically. Not much of a choice. Although cotton wood is pretty soft and might not be as hard on the machine.

 

[Ax-Man]

Thanks for the good replies. I like the way you guys can describe things. I just can't find the words to create a picture so to speak to describe what I am thinking.

I am still going to play the conservative game with our chipper. The only reason I brought this up I was over at AS and someone mentioned this feeding vertical pieces and it sounded like it was S.O.P. for them. I have a competitor doing the same thing at least I think that is what he is doing anyway. I always see a spar standing but never any big limb wood on the ground or on site anywhere. It sounds like a good way to get rid of wood but in the case of my compeitor it caught up to him because I heard he ran a piece through his chipper and it tore it up pretty bad and wanted the village he was working for to pay for it. Go figure, but that is the way he would operate. He has been runnign a smaller beater for over a year now so he must have tore his bigger machine up pretty good.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Thanks for the good replies. I like the way you guys can describe things.

I love that, too.